Credit card reconciliation poses a number of time-consuming challenges. Here are some of the key challenges and their quick fixes, to solve your accounts in minutes, not days.

Of all the reconciliation tasks the accounts department has to complete, credit card reconciliation has to be one of the most frustrating. The challenges we face when reconciling credit card statements with our company accounts, can potentially drag the frustration on for months, especially if you have a number of stores or sites to manage.

So what are the main challenges that cause credit card reconciliation to drag on?

Mismatched total amounts

Credit card statements can include the net amount, gross amount, and the service charge or fee from your settlement partner. If your settlement partner only transfers the net amount, your credit card statement and sales account will be mismatched. Finding out the gross amount each time adds an unnecessary extra layer of complexity to your reconciliation.

Date is a range – not specific

When trying to match your sales with your credit card statement you often need to use all the clues at your disposal, yet dates are an unreliable source of information. Because credit card transactions are not always registered on the date of sale, the dates shown on your credit card statement will be a range and not the specific date.

You track site data, the bank tracks merchant numbers

Your general sales ledger will likely record transactions by site number whereas the bank will record transactions by merchant numbers. Translating these merchant numbers to your site numbers can take some time, and that’s before you even get the chance to start matching the actual transactions against your ledger.

Statements don’t list card type

One other source of information which could be used to match accounts transactions is by card type. However, statements often won’t include card type data or, at best, may include only a total for each card type. This makes it difficult if not impossible to use this key source of differentiating data to reconcile your accounts.

Also, if you have several stores and all of this detective work has to be done, it really is a waste of the financial departments’ resources.

In an ideal world we would be able to store all the usual card data for each account and then convert the data fields from your statement to match your ledger data. In fact, an ideal solution would automatically match all the accounts as it went – suggesting partially matching data to be approved and recorded for automation next time.

“Just reconciling the 54 Swedish stores would take several days a month, now it’s done in one hour. And this means happier employees.”